Glad you like it!
[QUOTE=Gagundathar]
Nori I wish you all the best on your quest.
When I was about your age, and working as a computer scientist (yes, that early), when asked what I wanted to be when ‘i grew up’ I would answer, ‘I want to be a science fiction writer’.
I apparently haven’t grown up yet, but I have two or three stories in the incubator.
Keep at it. Read and write. Posting here hones your narrative skills. But, write every day. Even if just a few sentences or a paragraph or two.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, trust me, I do. (And did horribly on most of my college courses because of that, but that’s another story… :P) I spend most of my time thinking about or writing about my stories. And you would not believe how little progress I make doing that. XD But it’s better than no progress.
I find that once I get past the few small plot points and bits of dialogue that come to me almost right away, I hit a wall and can’t think of anything else — I can’t fill in the gaps. Then I end up spending the next two years mostly modifying what I already have while adding very little. Luckily I have a lot of stories on the go right now, so when my inspiration for one story starts to wane, I find that I start getting inspiration for another, so I’m always working on something. Case in point: This isn’t the story I’ve been mostly working on, and it hasn’t been for quite a while. But the other day my brain just started coming up with stuff so I had a two-day writing frenzy. It’s kind of come to a halt again but I made a good change that I’m kicking myself for not thinking of earlier, because it makes way more sense and actually makes it easier to proceed to the next part of the plot. XD Plus I managed to add a lot of exposition. It was mostly on-the-spot stuff that I didn’t really think about before writing, so I might have to change a lot of it (for instance, much of what I wrote was based on the assumption that my aliens are afraid of the dark, which I’ve pretty much scrapped, so I’ll have to delete/modify those parts), but I really like how it’s turned out because it gave me ideas. Am I making any sense? XD
Still, I wish my brain would come up with better ideas, faster. Some people are just so damn creative, whereas my brain’s like, “Ummmm… Yeah, sorry, no original thought here.” XD
[QUOTE=Gagundathar]
Doing makes it real. There is nothing that can replace it.
[/QUOTE]
I know exactly what you mean.
[QUOTE=Gagundathar]
When you get an idea, write it down. Either on your computer or on paper. Do not delay. Memory degrades and shifts. That isn’t a bad thing but it is a real thing.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, is it ever. Ugh. XD I do write all the time, though. I take my laptop everywhere I go and most of what I do is thinking about or writing about my stories. I even downloaded an application called “Thoughtback” specifically to write down new ideas that aren’t fully formed yet, just little thoughts that I have. And whenever I find pictures that remind me of something or look like something in my stories, or really good quotes that relate to my stories, I save those, too, because I’m so afraid of losing them otherwise. XD
[QUOTE=Gagundathar]
If you dream about this stuff, like I do, then keep a dream journal.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t generally remember my dreams when I wake up, and I don’t usually dream about my stories. But I daydream about them all the time. Unfortunately, often when I have those kinds of ideas that are really small but really awesome, it’s either when I’m starting to fall asleep, or the few times when I’m not in a position to write them down. XD I need to start keeping a pen and paper with me.
[QUOTE=Gagundathar]
Even a few words scribbled down when you get up to go to the bathroom at 0230 can prove to be a key to hidden gems in your mind. If nothing else, it will make going to the bathroom more interesting.
[/QUOTE]
LOL.
[QUOTE=Gagundathar]
Honestly, I wish you the very best on your quest. Your concepts, though not completely formed, are intriguing.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks!
[QUOTE=Gagundathar]
I love the concept of a ‘timeless’ culture. We have them here on Terra as well. Do you know that? There are still scattered hunter-gatherer tribes who have no words for days of the ‘week’.
[/QUOTE]
That doesn’t surprise me. A week is…well, it’s not “arbitrary”, per se, but when you think about it, it’s kind of weird that we have names for each day of the week, or that we measure our time with a number of days that’s not only odd but prime, and that isn’t even a factor of the number of days in the year. If I were designing a calendar, I’d have five-day weeks, because at least then the year would be evenly divisible by the days in a week.
My alien planet’s sidereal year is so short (37 Earth days) that it might be their equivalent of a “month” or “week”, if they even have such a concept, and they probably don’t measure time in anything bigger than that unless it’s a really long amount of time (like on the scale of lifetimes).
I don’t want time to be irrelevant to them, but I want them to think of it differently and relate to it differently. The fact that they don’t sleep, and that they live a long time even by Earth standards (so their 37-day year might be short enough to them to even qualify as just a “day”), plays a huge role in that. In a culture where days aren’t divided up into discrete units, how do you regulate work schedules? On Earth, we have designated sleep time and designated work time, and our biology even uses external cues to dictate when we feel tired and when we feel awake. My aliens don’t have separate times dedicated to work or sleep — you just keep doing whatever until you get tired, then you rest, then you keep going. And even when you’re resting you might still be doing something productive but less demanding. And if everyone gets tired at different times and rests for different lengths of time, how do you synchronize things?
But the thing is, this concept is only a problem from our perspective — the aliens evolved that way, so it would just be normal for them, and their societies would reflect that. But I, being human, have a hard time knowing how their society would work compared to ours, as far as time goes. That’s why I have to get inside their heads, which is understandably rather difficult.
It especially sucks when I’m writing their dialogue in English, because I don’t know how to translate certain things in a way that highlights the linguistic and conceptual differences, without being too difficult for a hypothetical reader to understand. Like, when they mention units of time, should I use their units, or ours? If I do the former, then the reader won’t know how that unit converts to human time units, but it will give a genuinely alien perspective, which is my goal; if I use the latter, the perspective won’t be alien enough (not to mention that the translation won’t be strictly accurate), but the reader will understand what I’m saying. I try to avoid just explaining to the reader what a thing means because then I’m not speaking from an alien narrator’s perspective, I’m speaking from a human narrator’s perspective, and I don’t like to switch back and forth. It’s awkward (because I start sounding like Lemony Snicket), and it’s not my goal. Grah. Some authors are so good at narrating from an alien perspective while still being easy to understand. I would love to know how they do it. I guess it helps if you’re using first-person narration, because then it doesn’t sound weird when the viewpoint character explains stuff. That’s how John Patrick Lowrie did it. But I don’t use first-person narration in this story, and I don’t just have one viewpoint character, either. I guess the reason it sounds so awkward to explain stuff in the narration is that I tend to use free indirect speech as my narration style, which is about as close to first-person narration as you can get without actually using first-person narration. But when I explain stuff, it suddenly becomes third-person omniscient, when it’s supposed to be third-person limited; and the difference is particularly glaring when you’re using free indirect speech. Basically, I don’t know how to narrate, is the point I’m making here. Grah.
Wow, I did not expect to be writing that much there. Phew.
Anyway… Do those tribes you mention have words for other units of time aside from days of the week?
[QUOTE=Gagundathar]
You might wish to study them as well.
[/QUOTE]
I will do that.
[QUOTE=Gagundathar]
Please keep us posted on your work.
[/QUOTE]
How posted? What kinds of things should I keep y’all posted on?